Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

Citoid, the automagic citation filling tool, is on its way at last. It's been up at the French and Italian Wikipedias for a while, with positive feedback overall. The time isn't firmly settled, but Wednesday evening UTC is most likely. This has been one of the most-requested features from experienced editors.

Citoid depends upon good TemplateData. Wikipedia:TemplateData/Tutorial explains how to write the basics by hand, but the TemplateData GUI tool is usually faster and easier. It also depends upon external services like Zotero. If your favorite website isn't working, it probably needs a new Zotero entry. The design is less than ideal. There is a book-with-bookmark button for Citoid, next to a now-unlabeled "Cite" menu for filling in citations the old way.

If you have suggestions on how to improve the design, then please leave your comments where the designers are most likely to see them, at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog. If you have any other suggestions or run into problems, then please leave feedback at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. If you would like to see Citoid at another wiki, then you may make that request in Phabricator: by creating a new task under the "Citoid" project. Most requests will probably not be granted for the next couple of weeks, but evidence that TemplateData is current on your main citation templates will likely improve your chances.

Here at the English Wikipedia, you will need to opt-in to VisualEditor via Beta Features to see Citoid. Pre-deployment testing can be done here on Beta Labs. (Before you ask: yes, after getting all the bumps smoothed out, the plan is to make it available in the wikitext editor as well. However, that will likely not be for some months yet.)

Happy editing, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:18, 25 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Update: This is being delayed for a few days. Monday (late) is the most likely time now. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:51, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

All very nice, but from the average editor's perspective just what does this do? I've read thru the links provided, but there's not one hint (or example) about what text an average editor types in & what formatted MOS-compliant text comes out. I have no idea if "Citoid" modifies existing citations or needs the data arranged in a specific way to produce citations that are compatible with {{cite}}, or perhaps some other standard. Or maybe it has nothing to do with creating citations for articles... The people involved assume all of us humble editors know a great deal about Citoid -- which is something I just learned existed. (And if you want people to use it, many of whom are not up to date on the latest Wikimedia software, Foundation employees need to do a much better job of explaining matters like this.) -- llywrch (talk) 15:24, 27 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi llywrch,

I apologize for not being clear enough. It's live now, so you can try it out.

1. Open VisualEditor ("Edit", not "Edit source"; opt-in here).
2. Click where you want to add a ref.
3. Click the "book with bookmark" icon (not the unlabeled dropdown menu right next to it; that takes you to the manual options).
4. Paste in your URL.
5. Click the "Look up" button.
6. Get formatted citation back, like this.

It uses citation templates. It'll show you what the citation will look like so you can spot any problems. You can edit the citation afterwards, which is especially useful when websites have gotten redesigned and now all of the information is 'lost' again. (Both BBC News and Google Books were having this problem last week, but I don't know what the current status is for them.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:16, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if it is possible to get statistics for how many article I prodded, or nominated for AfD, and how many of those were successful? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:24, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Your AFD stats ostensibly show you making 294 nominations and 119 resulting in deletions. However, the table has counted you as !voting keep in some, for example Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Helga_Guitton, where you do not seem to have actually changed your !vote although you acknowledged the work done to save the article. Thincat (talk) 08:16, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Thincat: Thanks. Is there any tool analyzing proposed deletions? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:42, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Piotrus, I don't know of any tool for PROD statistics. But your last 100 deleted edits go back to 2 February, and your edit summaries include the word 'prod' for 44 of them. For unsuccessful prods you can survey your own contribution list for the word 'prod'. At least one user has been keeping a table of the results of his own proposed deletions. See User:Blanchardb/Prod statistics. EdJohnston (talk) 03:05, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@EdJohnston: Doesn't one have to be an admin to view (any)one's deleted edits and their edit summaries? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:18, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Both PROD and CSD have the problem that non-admins can't see the deleted articles. But notice Wikipedia:Twinkle/doc#PROD (proposed deletion) for another way of tracking prods. It allows you to create a userspace log of your prods. EdJohnston (talk) 01:45, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Where is the apropriate place for this suggestion?... Does it belong somewhere on the WikiMedia site? Or on the Esperento or Ido wikipedias? "As as esperento and ido are closly similar contributions to one wikipedia should be added to the other wikipedia as well thru machine translation " --Thank You Naytz (talk) 02:57, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Or perhaps at village pump(technical) ? Naytz (talk) 02:59, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would say you would need to discuss on the two wikipedia's involved to see if it is something they want to do. It does not involve the English wikipedia so would not be something to discuss on this wikipedia. Davewild (talk) 07:40, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Naytz: It's certainly not an English Wikipedia matter; I suspect that it's something to bring up at meta: you could try the talk page of the Language committee on Meta. See also m:Proposals for closing projects. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:32, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You might talk to User:Amire80, who can probably tell you about the pros and cons of this idea. (Short answer: it definitely depends on the quality of the available machine translations.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:08, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the ping, Whatamidoing :)

Esperanto and Ido are indeed similar, and a machine translation engine for them can be made relatively easily. As all machine translation, humans will have to check the quality of the text, but the initial output should be very good. Apertium is a good Free package for building machine translation between similar languages. It already has some support for Esperanto, but not Ido. Someone actually has to invest time in building the language pair files for Esperanto-Ido translation. If that is done, it will be easy to integrate it with ContentTranslation. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 07:35, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia#The data set and the main article counter, about 100000 new articles got added within the past 48 hours or so. Was this an epic article creation drive, or something else going on there? Dl2000 (talk) 03:50, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Dl2000: This is being discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Article count jumps by 100,000 in a day.... --Redrose64 (talk) 10:31, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This global map of the oceans in mid-Pliocene, around 4-4.5 million years ago, and the deviations in water temperature compared with the present, has all present-day coastlines which makes it rather misleading. In a real image of the world at the time, the Panama isthmus would not yet exist, northern Europe and the western Mediterranean would look somewhat different (the Baltic Sea and the North Sea were not around prior to the most recent glaciations, Java and some other SE Asian islands didn't exist prior to around 2 million years ago, India should be stretching a wee bit further south and so on. The map is an original work by a user, built on data from the US Geological Survey, but their site has moved since the graphic was made, meaning it is now difficult to retrieve and check the data it was constructed on and see how old those data are.

I suggest someone should check the file and the data it represents and, at least, add a disclaimer onto the graphic saying that the outlines of coastlines and seas are not all correct. Also, check if there are more maps from the same source by the same user with the same error (it would become graver the further back in time you got, of course). Strausszek (talk) 06:59, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The file description page shows that the source is http://geology.er.usgs.gov/eespteam/prism/index.html - I can't speak for the reliability of this, but I see that the map is hosted on Commons, not Wikipedia; have you contacted the uploader, Giorgiogp2 (talk · contribs)? --Redrose64 (talk) 11:27, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There is a new tool on labs that allows watching category membership changes (pages added/removed) to user specified categories. It can also monitor template addition/removal. Here is a sample watchlist. There is also a recent changes list that displays recent categorization changes. Feedback can be left on the bots talk page. --Bamyers99 (talk) 18:56, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all - sorry if this has been mentioned before (I couldn't see it on a quick scan through the archives). Categories seem to have become weird, annoying, and difficult to use for me recently. Whereas up until a week or so ago, a category with over 200 articles would list the first 200 on its first category page divided neatly into three columns of 65-70, they now seem to be broken into columns dependant upon their first letter/number. Which means that for big categories, often you'll get two columns, one of, say, 170 As and one of the first 30 Bs, or just one long column. Small categories seem to be equally haphazard. Is there any preferences and/or java changes I can make to restore the previous method (if it's a glitch with me alone, FWIW I use Google Chrome 41.0.2272.104 and use the monobook skin) Grutness...wha? 00:01, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is it every category, or just some? I know there were some changes, but I thought they were just about the formatting of the columns. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:09, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Grutness: This is Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 135#Have categories been messed with?. The display is optimised when page names are evenly-distributed through the alphabet, but that's rarely the case. It's best to provide examples.

@Whatamidoing (WMF): For a single-page example, try Category:Heart of Wales Line where the high proportion of railway stations beginning "Llan" (this is Wales, remember) forces all the Ls into the last column, causing the centre column to end after just four entries - 12.5% of the category, instead of after 10 or 11 entries, for 33.3% of the cat. For a multi-page but moderate example, try Category:Former London and North Western Railway stations which has A and B in the first column, D, E and F in the second, G and part of H in the third - notice the large gap below the last of the Hs. For a more extreme example, have a look at Category:Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates; this is a maintenance cat which I work through alphabetically every few months; when I came to it about a week ago, there were some 1200 pages in the cat. I've been working at it at about one or two letters per day, and last night I did the I's and J's, and it got down to about 550 - but after 10 hours it's now up to 628 again. It fills up pretty quickly (because inexperienced users simply do not understand that adding {{pp-move-indef}} or {{pp-pc1}} is only appropriate for pages which already have with an indefinite move protection or level 1 pending changes) and is a never-ending task, but for the moment it demonstrates the problem very well, since letters up to J have few pages compared to later letters. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:04, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Whatamidoing (WMF): - here are a few good examples of the problem: Category:Main Belt asteroid stubs, Category:Living people, Category:Chatham Cup, Category:Years, Category:English writers Category:United States Navy ship names... and basically any other category with over a couple of hundred articles or with unevenly distributed article names. Which is a LOT of categories. With smaller categories the effect is often disguised because there will only be a handful of articles beginning with each letter or number - but with big categories it's a nightmare. Grutness...wha? 10:36, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the links. That is pretty awkward. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:32, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I just reverted a hoax that was inserted in November 2010 and had gone undetected for 4 years. Amazingly, it survived the scrutiny of such venerable editors as Roger Davies, Missvain, Ser Amantio di Nicolao, Waacstats, and Lockley. Also, I'm amazed that Adrienne Monnier's article is so tiny. Kaldari (talk) 21:51, 31 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not surprising. That page has 9 watchers, and averages about 15 views per day. Vandalism gets through, and sometimes people miss it. No one is to blame, and no one is to be made to feel bad for that. We fix it, we move on, and we don't hold other good-faith editors to blame for missing it. This isn't a game, you don't win because you made others feel bad about themselves (or tried to. Not sure you succeeded in much except revealing your own pettiness). Just revert, move on, and forget about it. It's what the cool kids are all doing. --Jayron32 01:23, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Jayron32: In case you misread what I wrote, I actually complimented the editors that I listed. I called them venerable, which means worthy of veneration. Some of those editors are my personal friends and I certainly had no intention of making them feel bad. I was just surprised that no one had caught it before me. The post was meant in good humor, and if anyone felt like it was a criticism I sincerely apologize. Could you please retract your personal attacks against me? Kaldari (talk) 02:23, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Kaldari, thanks for finding and fixing that problem. Thanks for calling us venerable. I'm putting that on my CV right away. Here's wishing that you and Jayron32 can both, in good humor, let any misunderstanding slide. I say this with mellow voice from my rocking chair through my long white mustache. Cause I'm freakin' venerable and no one can stop me now. --Lockley (talk) 02:51, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We need a "venerable" badge to put on our front porches (User pages). Maybe something with a rocking chair in it. Where can I suggest such a talisman? Sincerely, BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 03:35, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wikipedia Awards seems like a good place. I'm a terrible graphic artist, but someone should be able to knock one out pretty easily, if they know what they are doing. --Jayron32 16:13, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Only 4 years? - X201 (talk) 18:22, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure which is worse: finding a 4-year-old hoax like that, or writing an article then returning to it 4+ years later to find a glaring typo no one bothered fixing. (The former implies our information is not accurate; the latter that, for the most part, no one is really reading it.) -- llywrch (talk) 22:29, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi!
I made a template to insert emoji on discussion pages! You can find it at: {{emoji}}.
They supplement the already available emoticons with a larger set of symbols. There are options for size and for different visual themes (available from Commons); you can see them on the documentation page at Template:Emoji. There’s also a palette of available emojis there.
Have a nice day!
~ Nclm (talk) 09:42, 2 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See {{smiley}}. -- Gadget850 ^talk 12:55, 2 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, I knew about {{smiley}}. Emoji is simply a Unicode standardised set of emoticons. They form a larger ensemble, and are in a more consistent style, than other emoticons templates are. We’ve got three free licensed entire themes of emoji on Commons, so I think it’s an interesting alternative. Nclm (talk) 16:07, 2 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Nclm: Did you know that most licenses, including the CC-BY-SA-4.0 license used on File:Emojione 1F60A.svg, require a link to the image page to satisfy the attribution requirement? Anomie⚔ 20:36, 2 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, you’re right! I’m quite ashamed not to have thought about this.
Thanks for editing the template and putting things right! Nclm (talk) 21:08, 2 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Changes on the user page, the user talk page, and the user's sandbox?

Personally, I never change a user page, or a user's sandbox, except by mistake, rarely. I do post to a user page, and I occasionally add colons as a matter of formatting.

Recently another editor made some quite correct updates to a draft article well down on my user talk page. As a matter of policy, should other editors do this? What about articles in my sandbox? What do other experienced editors do? What is the policy?--DThomsen8 (talk) 19:20, 4 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I want to use an excerpt from the USGS Flushing NY Quad to illustrate an article. Since the USGS is part of the US Government, I assumed that anything they do is published without copyright, but I'm unable to find a place to download the quads from that looks like a government site. The best I found was https://www.topoquest.com/map-detail.php?usgs_cell_id=15664, which is a commercial site that looks like it re-publishes the government charts. Does anybody know where I can find a free image of the USGS topo charts? -- RoySmith (talk) 00:50, 5 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, never mind. I found Libre Map. -- RoySmith (talk) 00:50, 5 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As we are less than one month away from the ten-year anniversary of the creation of the Wikipedia:Wiki-Hell essay, I propose that we celebrate by making it policy. I may be four days late in asking for this. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:21, 5 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Wiki Team,

I request you to keep right click option on every English word if we do not understand the word, We can right click on the word and check synonyms then and there, So we would not need to go away from Wikipedia to understand a word.

Keep Synonyms option the way Microsoft kept in MS Outlook and MS word.

Please do it as soon as possible. It would be very useful for the world specially who uses English as their secondary language.